For many years, products such as snack foods have been individually packaged by conventional form, fill, and seal packaging machines in the snack food industry. Snack foods are many, and include items such as candy bars, sweet rolls honey buns, doughnuts, etc. Improved packaging technology over the years has ensured both the freshness and purity of food items enclosed therein. For example, human contact/handling of food items has been almost completely eliminated by the automated packaging machinery of recent years.
Typically, individually packaged snacks today are packaged in flexible films that are fed from rolls of flexible sheet material to form tubes for receiving individual product servings being delivered at high speeds. The individual servings are then separated by heat-sealing mechanisms that seal the individual packages in the longitudinal and transverse (top and bottom) positions. The individual packages are subsequently packaged in bulk and stored/shipped for subsequent sale and consumption.
Individually packaged snack food items are usually consumed by persons who are away from home and on-the-go. As such, these consumers typically do not have napkins or other wiping items available while eating the snack items. Unfortunately, some snack items such as honey buns, cinnamon buns, doughnuts and other pastries have glazing or sticky coatings. As a result, consumers get “sticky” fingers and lack any means to wipe them or wash them.